Brother From Another Planet
by calicoskies4ever
Summary: Lionel Luthor went to Smallville in search of the traveler. What if he had found the boy and raised him as part of his family? Starts when Lucas Clark is 12, and Lex is 16. Warning child abuse, molestation, language, etc. Spoliers for all episodes.
1. Chapter 1

Standing in the hallway watching as my father yells at Mr

Lionel Luthor went to Smallville in search of the traveler, but in the mess of the meteor shower, he nearly lost his son. What if he had found the Kryptonian, and took the boy home, made him part of the family, raised him like a normal little boy. Takes place around season one (Clark age 12, Lex age 16) when his abilities first start to show up. Warning some hints of child abuse, molestation, swear words, Luthorcest (Clark aka Lucas Luthor and Lex) as well as a few other things.

Chapter One: in which Lucas Luthor decides to trust his older brother with a secret.

"I can't stand to fly;  
I'm not that naïve.  
Men weren't meant to ride,  
with clouds between their knees.  
I'm only a man in a silly red sheet,  
digging for kryptonite on this one way street.  
Only a man in a funny red sheet,  
looking for special things inside of me," John Ondrasik.

Standing in the hallway watching as my father yells at Mr. Teague, I can't help feeling scared, even though I know I'm not supposed to be like that. He wouldn't like it. He'd be mad. Then the door bursts open and Dad storms out of the room with that usual angry look on his face, the one he gets right before yelling and throwing someone around or—hurt me, but he doesn't do any of those things now.

"Ready to go on an adventure, Son" he asks, in the nice voice. So I nod, and pretend I wasn't spying on him before. "Alright, where's your tie?" Then Dad gets down on his knees, bent low so our faces are level. "We are going on a helicopter ride to a friendly little town, called Smallville."

"The rest of the day is pretty much a blur, sorry," I explain as my brother sits, watching me with his cheeks puffed full of air. It's like there's something the kid wants to tell me, some big, important detail about his past. What Lucas doesn't know is that Dad—Lionel—didn't say anything to me or Mom, when he brought home the little raven-haired boy who smiled all the time, except that "his parents passed away, in the meteor shower. This poor, little tyke doesn't have anybody in the whole wide world."

"Technically I was unconscious when he found you, but according to his version of events, you were just standing there, bent over so you could touch my face. Then—I don't know. E waved down this farm couple and they drove the three of us to the hospital to get checked out—and when they released me, everyone went back to Metropolis, which is where we've been for the last nine years." Luke nods again, but his eyes are questioning, wide-open, and (maybe) a little scared.

"So the people from the farm didn't know who I was? They didn't know anything about my real family?" I have absolutely no idea what he's trying to get at, not that I really care all that much. Ever since the day we brought the kid home. Dad barely even looks at me—except in disgust and—but Lucas was everything he had ever wanted in a son, and couldn't have because I was born sick, and weak, and pathetic. The kid was strong, healthy, with a full head of hair. If Lionel could be forced to choose between his biological child and the one he found in a cornfield, it wouldn't be difficult.

"Look, I know adopted kids always wonder about their real parents but you—Lionel probably told them we were _both_ his kids. Lying is second nature to him. Hell, he probably lies more easily than he tells the truth. Besides your real parents are dead. There's nothing to find out. They probably got disintegrated by a falling meteor," I said coldly, knowing it would make the kid cry, and not giving a damn. I knew I shouldn't hate my (adopted) little brother. After all, it wasn't _his_ fault Lionel was a complete creep who pitted us against each other, making us fight for the tiniest scraps of affection. He can't control how strong he is, my baldness, my father's cruelty, or any of the situations we found ourselves in. None of what Lionel did to me, said to him, (or vice versa) was this little boy's fault. I knew all these things, but I hated my kid brother with a passion, and yet at the same time I was still ridiculously jealous of him. Lionel loved, loves him, or at least he acts that way to make us fight (and it works). So when Luke came up to me this afternoon and started asking all these questions about how he came to be part of our family, it's only natural for me to want to tell him to go away and leave me alone, but I don't.

"Did Dad say something to you?" I asked, carefully touching his shoulder. "Did he—touch—hurt you or. I don't know how to say this, but did Lionel. What exactly do you want?" I finally manage to spit out, running a hand over the flat surface of my own head. I feel like my brother might be working up the courage to tell me that our father is messing with him.

"I think there's something wrong with me," he blurts out, his big blue eyes unable to make contact with me.

"I know it's scary, and sometimes the stuff he dos it hurts, sometimes, and sometimes it feels good and bad at the same time but that doesn't mean you're a bad person or anything."

"What are you talking about?" he asks, as only a nine-year-old can.

"What are you talking about?" I ask, and then the kid takes me by the hand, practically dragging me down the hall, out to the yard. "I wanna show you something, but don't freak out…and don't tell Dad. No matter what, don't tell him any of this."

"Don't worry," I promise. "I'm almost as good at keeping secrets as he is. You probably are too, and if you're not, you will be someday. It's part of being a Luthor, a survival technique if you would." The kid stops when we get out to the yard, and looks around, sucks air in, and then does something I can't really explain. He sort of "zooms off" like a cartoon character, by which I mean, there is this loud sound, whoosh, and Lucas is gone. It's like he ran off, but at 30 or 40 miles an hour. And, before I can even stop and wonder what he's done, where he's gone, or how any of this is possible, he's back, with a Metropolis Sharks stadium dog in his hand. The field is more than fifteen miles away from our house, and there's no way he could have driven there, gone in, gotten the hot dog, and come back this quickly. He couldn't have had someone waiting, because the hot dog would be cold. I really don't know _what_ to think. "How did you just—what did you do?" I ask, still in a bit of shock.

"I'm not completely sure. The first time it happened, I got really scared, and I freaked out so bad I didn't leave my room for a week, but I think I've got it under control now." He was always weird. Things have a tendency to break when he's around, and even though he's strange, nobody had tried to beat him up since Kindergarten when some bully pushed him, and nearly broke his neck when Luke pushed back. Still, that was a freak accident; at least I used to think it was.

"What do you mean, the first time it happened? Are you trying to tell me that you've been able to do this for a while? How long? How many times has this happened, and…you—think you have it under control? So what, there are still problems? What kind of problems? How did all of this happen in the first place? Why are you able to do these things?"

"I don't know. That's why I asked," he explains, looking up at me with big, bright eyes, a mixture of fear, confusion, and love on his face. "We're brothers; we're supposed to help each other, right? I'm supposed to come t you with my problems. I would have told Mom but…" he looks at his feet again. "She's so sick, and I'm a little scared of what would happen if Dad ever found out."

"He'd probably put you on display somewhere and sell tickets. Sorry, that was meaner than I meant it to be." Lucas sighs, giving me another look, as if to say, maybe so, but you're right. "Besides, the speed thing, is there anything else you can do? I mean, uh—boy this really…I—you, I'm freaking out a little here, so cut me some slack if I react a bit crudely." He nods, and I continue. "What—I mean, uh, is there anything else you can do?"

"I'm really strong—a lot more than when I was in kindergarten too. I mean, of course I'm stronger than a six-year-old, but…I hafta be really careful in gym class so I don't hurt any of the other kids, and…remember last year when my dirt bike went nuts, and crashed into a tree at the bottom of that big hill? Well, I told everybody I jumped off right before it hit, but I didn't."

"You were on the dirt bike when it crashed right into the tree? They said it was going at least 50! You would have gone over the handlebars, flown through the air and slammed into the ground. The doctor said you're lucky you don't have a skull fracture or worse."

"I'm more lucky than he knew. I hardly ever get hurt by anything, and a couple of weeks ago I was playing catch in my room and the ball rolled under a sofa. SO I pushed it a little, to get at my ball, and the couch almost smashed into the wall. I can show you that too, if you want." Lucas took a few steps back scanning the yard, looking all around. "I don't see anything heavy enough to really demonstrate."

We go back inside and the kid shows me, lifting up a pool table over his head. Then he goes up to my room, and we just sit there, watching each other, both of us too stunned or too scared to think of what to say. "I think there might be something wrong with me. Why am I able to do these things otherwise? Why is this stuff happening to me?" To be perfectly honest I have no idea. I don't have any answers for him, no excuse. None of what is happening to him is normal.

If he were older, going through puberty, I'd know exactly what to tell him. It would be weird, and I wouldn't like it much, but I'd understand. I'd be able to help him, even if he confessed to me that Lionel was hurting him (the way my father hurts me) but this… This is just so strange, so alien. I have no idea how to deal with it, and neither does he. "It's okay if you don't know the answer, but can I use your computer? Dad always looks over my shoulder when I go online."

"Why what are you gonna do, Google kids and superpowers?" I say, trying to make myself feel more comfortable. This whole situation is so weird, even for my family. I'm still uncomfortable with my little brother, and can't help but feel like he and Lionel were somehow working together to trick me, hurt me somehow. Lucas had—what he's doing, this is impossible. Nobody can do the things he is doing. It is impossible. "Okay, come here we'll look some stuff up together. What should we try?"

"Well maybe it has something to do with that day in Smallville, like your—like the way your asthma went away and how you never get sick now. It could be some sort of a weird thing. Maybe a lot of people are different because of it."

"You're a weird little kid," I tell him, with a small chuckle. Lucas and I have our problems, but the fact that he trusted me with this is sort of a big deal. It's like a breakthrough. He doesn't really talk to people, and ever since he nearly killed that kid in kindergarten, even Lionel couldn't buy the kid's way back into Excelsior. Personally, I think he likes having one of us close by and one far away. It messes with both our heads. I wonder why the kid is allowed to be at home, close to his family, in a seemingly happy environment, and he wonders why I get to go to one of the best schools in the country while he's stuck at some crummy public school in downtown Metropolis. "But you're not entirely stupid."

So I login to my computer, fire up the web, click on Google, and type in Smallville Kansas, meteor shower 1989. What come up are mostly old newspaper articles written around the time of the meteor shower. _Kansas town recuperates from tragic meteor shower_ or something like that. Then there are some sites written by science geeks, reporting what happened, why it may have happened, and detailing all of the astronomical facts anyone could ever want to know. Last but not least, there was a website written by some high school student from Smallville, listing residents of the town who have developed certain abilities after the meteor shower.

"There's an email address there. You should try and contact this person. She sounds like she knows what she's talking about. Look at all of these stories. This Sullivan person seems to know a lot about what's happening. Maybe I'm one of these meteor infected people. Maybe she can help me."

"Okay. Let's see, a Miss. Chloe Sullivan. I don't know, this just sounds like a bad idea. The people in Smallville don't exact love our family. We sort of destroyed their town, even more than the meteor shower did."

"Dad did that, not us."

"I doubt she'll see the difference."

"There might be something wrong with me; I need to figure out what that is! I'm the one who might go out to grab the morning paper and end up in Vancouver or something! I'm scared and she might be able to help me. Please, Lex. You're my brother. You have to do this for me."

"Okay, I'll try and email here, but I can't guarantee that she'll listen to us, let alone do something to help," I told him, and sat there for an hour and a half trying to think of the right things to say to this girl. Then I had Lucas look over the email, and hit send. We waited more than two weeks for a response, durring which time I felt hopeful and gave up at least a hundred times, but she did write back to us. It was the summer time, and we were both off of school, so it wasn't hard to get my brother up to my room in private (Dad was at work) so we could read her email.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: in which the Luthor boys begin to unravel the mysteries surrounding Lucas's early childhood

Author Notes: obviously this is an Alternate Universe story, but I thought I should say that just in case you didn't figure that out.

"Well the doctor said son It's a cryin shame  
But you ain't Clark Kent and I ain't Lois Lane  
You ain't Superman you ain't Superman  
Tryin to do more than you can  
You ain't Superman," Willie Nelson

Chapter Two: in which the Luthor boys begin to unravel the mysteries surrounding Lucas's early childhood.

From: 

To: 

Subject: RE Meteor infected

Well, "Lex," the only thing I find more difficult to believe than your story, is that Lionel Luthor's _son_ would want anything to do with a small town student run newspaper. Even If you were telling the truth about your brother having been in Smallville on the day of the Meteor shower, there's no way he could have lived here before that. I checked into the police reports from that day, and there are no dead bodies unaccounted for, and no children reported missing. No unidentified bodies or missing adults either, which means that either A: your brother some how managed to get into the middle of a cornfield by route 9 all on his own, durring a deadly storm no less, at ate the age of three, B: his parents who were not from Smallville disappeared (along with any evidence of their existence) disappeared on the day of the storm, or C: somebody is lying. Then again, if your brother actually does have the abilities as you claim, then he must have been exposed to the rocks at one time or another. So, if this is not some kind of a prank, I would love to hear from you again. Maybe we can meet sometime, and see if we can figure this whole mess out.

Good Luck on your search for the truth,

Chloe Sullivan

From: 

To: 

Subject: RE Meteor Infected

Miss Sullivan, while we can't speak for our father, both Lucas and I couldn't care less if, you were from Smallville high school, or MIT, as long as you are able to help us get to the truth. My memories of that day are hazy at best, and Lucas was barely out of diapers, so until now all we've had to go on has been Lionel's version of events. Would there be anyway for you or for us to look into his background some more. This whole thing is so weird, and my brother is just trying to figure out what's happening to him. Lex and Lucas.

PS: I wouldn't be surprised if your _somebody's lying_ theory turned out to be true, but we're not the ones you should be worried about. My brother and I are telling the truth.

After responding to Chloe Sullivan's email, my brother and I spent a significant amount of time sitting at opposite ends of my room, staring at the floor, trying to figure out what to say to each other. This had been happening a lot recently, mainly because we barely spoke to each other before these things started, and now we're just trying to figure out how to deal with what's happening to us.

"But if there were no missing kids and no unidentified bodies that means my parents weren't in Smallville when the meteors hit. What if—what could have happened to them?" Luke asks, fresh tears in his eyes, as he turns his face away. "Did they leave me in a field in the middle of nowhere or what? I mean, that's the only thing that makes sense, but even Dad wouldn't do something that bad."

"There could be a lot of explanations for what happened."

"Like what?" he shouts, standing up, and wiping his eyes.

"Well, maybe they were from Smallville, and maybe you even lived there, but your other relatives were--maybe nobody was able to identity their bodies or Lionel paid someone off to destroy any record that has anything to do with you. Or maybe," I stop myself just in time, before I spill my guts and say something really stupid. Ever since Lucas came to me, I've been looking into the meteor shower on my own, doing a lot of research. There were a couple of fringe weirdoes who put up lots of research detailing their theories and while it did seem possible, I wasn't sure if it was probable yet. Until I was positive I didn't want to make my brother worry about something that could be complete bullshit.

"Or what?" he growls, the nervousness I was previously worried about, already starting to set in. _Damn, he's freaking out._ _That's the last thing we need right now._ "Or what, Lex?" Luckily I don't have to answer him.

The computer chirps, "You've got mail" cheerfully, just in time to stop us, and the message is from my new favorite reporter. Apparently now that she's interested, so we've become a priority.

From: 

To: 

Subject: RE Meteor infected

From what I've seen most meteor infected (some people call them meteor freaks, though I'm not sure how PC that might be) are prone to fits of rage, criminal activities, and a weird obsession with our school's head cheerleader, one Lana Lang. You may have heard of her as she was on the cover of _Time _magazine article about the meteor shower. Her parents were killed that day, right in front of her. She was the girl in the fairy princess costume. She has been kidnapped, attacked, beaten up, you name it. A couple of them even sent her love letters and poetry. But, I suppose he isn't responsible for any of the things that happened to her since the last time he was in thrown he was a toddler. I've managed to do some more checking (this is gonna take a few more days) but as far as I can tell, there is absolutely no record that your brother ever exited before (date?) It's really weird, like he road one of those rocks down to Earth or something. Anyway, I'd really like to document some of this stuff, if we can, in person. Feel free to give me a call. 555-2250.

"Write back and ask her about the whole no record of me before 1989! How is that even possible, and don't tell me Dad had them erased. I know he could, but why bother? Seriously, if my parents were dead—and even if they weren't he could have bribed people to pretend the adoption was legal. So, he didn't need to pretend that I didn't exist. At least tell me what you've been trying to hide the last couple of days."

"There's a small group of people who believe that a space ship landed with the meteors. It is possible, however unlikely that they are right. If this is true then there would have been somebody in side that ship, somebody who didn't exist until nine years ago. Don't ask me to explain it because I can't, but if you were the person from the ship, then it might explain your abilities." Lucas was standing when I said this but now he's sitting on the floor, running his fingers through his hair, and rocking slowly.

A big part of me wants to go over and comfort the kid, but at the same time I'm glad to see him freaking out. He's no longer the perfect golden-boy. _He's just as screwed up as the rest of us. No, I can't think like that._ Even if I'm right, he's still my brother, I still love him. We can't let Lionel tear us apart, and destroy our lives. Finally, able to make up my mind, I walk across the room, and place my hand on his trembling shoulder. Luke raises his head, and stares up at me with wet, red-rimmed eyes. "If it's true, and that is a really big if, it doesn't change anything."

"What if you are right? Isn't this sort of a huge coincidence that Lionel Luthor, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is the person who found me? Why didn't that farm couple discover the ship? Why—what if it's true is there something he's planning to do to me? With me?" As is becoming the trend I have no idea what to say to him. I'm having a hard enough time trying no to hate the kid. Lionel's plans to keep us apart probably would have succeeded if it weren't for this. Lucas really trusts me, I keep reminding myself, I have to be careful, and not blow it.

"If a spaceship did land, then you'd better believe Lionel had it taken away and hidden somewhere. Between this place, the beach house, the castle in Smallville, his office complex, and everything else he owns, it could be anywhere. You could search your entire life without finding the thing. We—I don't even know where to begin looking. Hell, it could be in a storage unit in the middle of nowhere."

"And I can search all of those places in five minutes! Plus if we find where he's keeping the ship maybe we can find other stuff. Maybe we can learn all the stuff he's been hiding since the day he found me!" It's easy to tell that Lucas is very excited about this. He thinks he's stumbled onto a great idea, and I hate to be the one who has to dump all over it.

"Even if there weren't security cameras in all of the homes, all of the place, and everywhere at Luthorcorp plaza—which by the way there are—and you did find the ship, it doesn't have anything in it. So, we'd still have to find his papers and files and stuff, and it's not like Lionel keeps all of his important information in a folder marked, _my big secrets_ on the family computer. I'm a fairly decent hacker, but I haven't found anything yet. I'm good at this. One time…I broke into the school's record system and changed the emergency phone number on my file, so that whenever I got in trouble, the call would go to my cell phone. But then Dad found out, 'cuz he was in my room and the phone rang, and I couldn't get the thing before he did. Then he creamed me, and—anyway…I can't get into anything that tells us even the most remote details about the meteor shower, or your history."

"Dad hit you?" Lucas asks, like this was some sort unheard of concept.

"Yeah. So what? It's like he's never hurt you or anything, right?"

"Well he's grabbed me by the shoulder and shaken me a couple of times, and backhanded me, but it doesn't really hurt, because I'm not just strong on the inside…I can't get injured, not seriously anyway. Even after the dirt bike thing, I only got a couple bruises." I'm sure the last thing in the world he wants to talk about is this, but suddenly I'm worried about my brother. I'm not positive what Dad might or might not do to him, and I hate the idea of anyone going through what I have (what I'm still going through) even if it is Lucas. I may not act like he's the most important person in the world—mainly because I don't feel that way—but the idea that Lionel might hurt him, or anybody for that matter, is enough to make me sick, not that I'd be able to do anything for my brother, let alone myself.

"Is that the only stuff he does?" I ask, wanting to punch myself for making him go through this, still debating as to how hard I'm going to push the poor kid if he doesn't want to answer.

"He doesn't really throw or hit me anymore, but I'm pretty sure Dad knows that it doesn't have much of any effect on me. I mean, he knows it doesn't really hurt. I think that might be why he started doing the other stuff, the—you know—_bad_ stuff. Even though it doesn't hurt, I always still feel sort of—a—um—" he pauses, unable to really finish his sentence.

"Hurt?" I offer, feeling like I might be able to save Lucas at least a little bit of dignity by not forcing him to go into graphic details about this. "Yeah, I know. He does it to me too." I stop talking, as my brother latches onto me, face pressed into my chest as he starts to sob again, and I sit there, just holding him. "It's okay. I'll talk to Dad, make him leave you alone from now on, I promise."

"How are you going to do that?" he asks. I hate that he asked that. I know I can't lie to him about this and as soon as Luke hears my plan, he's going to go nuts and refuse to allow me to go along with it.

"Well, it's simple. I just go to Dad, and promise that I'll do whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, but only if he'll leave you alone." My brother's face looks like a terrified whipped puppy attempting to screw up his courage and attack its abuser.

"No," he says, weakly. "You can't do that."

"Yes, I can. I'm older. I've been through it more times. There's no hope for me, Lucas. But you, though—you're special. You're going to make something of yourself, do big things, important things. You have unlimited potential, and I won't let him take that away from you."

"But why? I always thought you hated me!"

"I do—I did—I…Dad wanted us not to like each other. If we're enemies we'll fight harder, make ourselves stronger, better, whatever. Plus, it keeps us from ganging up on him, but you're baby brother and I'm supposed to protect you from bullies, rotten teachers and sexual predators…okay, so that's even less funny out loud than it was in my head."

"But who's gonna protect you?" his voice isn't quivering any longer, and I know that if I do this right, I can get back to the email conversation between us and the Sullivan girl in Smallville.

"I'll be alright. I'm a lot stronger than I look." I wait a few minutes before continuing, so he can have an opportunity to say something if he really wants—needs—to. "We should probably respond to that email, tell the girl everything we know for sure, any suspicions we have, and see if she can tie up all the loose ends."

"That's gonna take a lot of knots," Lucas says, attempting to sound cheerful and almost, almost, pulling it off. "See, I can make a joke too."

"Not really, you sort of suck at it. Of course, that's probably because you've got the IQ of a chipmunk. If I didn't know better, I'd think you had miles and miles of gorgeous hair stuffed in your skull instead of a brain."

"At least I have hair!" Lucas suddenly looks like he's said something far worse than he actually did. "Sorry. I know it's a—though subject for you. And I'm also sorry you lost your hair because of me." My blank stare is enough to let him know that—as usual—he isn't making much sense. "If I came here in a ship durring the Smallville meteor shower then maybe I caused the whole thing and everybody who got hurt, or died, it's all my fault."

"okay—first of all, _if_ you were part of the meteor shower in Smallville, then it's entirely possible that the giant rocks had nothing to do with your ship, and even if they did, you were three-years-old! You still wore a diaper. You couldn't even speak, how could you be at fault for something so—complex?"

"I don't know. I just feel responsible. All those people, whose lives were ruined, or ended, it was all because of something I had a part in."

"Do you know what Lionel was doing in Smallville that day? He conned an entire family into handing over control of their creamed corn factory to him. Then he fired everybody and turned it into a fertilizer plant. I was with him that day. I know it's not the same thing, but—do you see where I'm going here? Good, not let's email that girl; see if she can crack the mystery that is Lucas Luthor."

"Then what do we do? I mean, if I _am_ alien, and we can find my spaceship, find out everything, or anything, about my past—even if we learn everything, it doesn't actually give us any power. It won't mean anything."

"It's a good thing you're _my_ little brother and not on a farm somewhere. In comic books, the super heroes are always around your age when they discover the powers, abilities, and after lots of hard work, and training, they can do things you can only imagine in your wildest dreams. We'll be able to get away from Lionel and you can—well I haven't got that one completely figured out yet, but the world needs people like you, Lucas, a hero, a savior."

"I'm not a god."

"Nor should you be, but somebody with these gifts can't waste his time managing, or running some random company. You could save people's lives, put out forest fires, stop bank robbers, or terrorists, make the world a better place."

"How?"

"I'm not—completely sure. We should do some more research. Maybe—come here with me," I say, taking his hand, and half dragging him to my room. "I've got all the Warrior Angel comic books in special cases. Here we go...this is the one that shows how he first discovered his superpowewrs, and this one—this is the first issue ever mad, um, but we can't read this one. I've got a reprint somewhere, ah there we go. We're also gonna need numbers 47, 68, and—when was the one where he—it had all of these flashback scenes. I think it was either last week, or last month, or the one before it. We should probably go through all or most of them, so you can have a better idea of what I'm talking about."

"You're talking about turning me into a comic book character! Lex, for all we know, I'm a meteor freak, who's only an inch away from going psycho, and killing a cheerleader!"

"Dad wouldn't have brought home some random kid unless he knew you were special. He knows a lot of stuff that he's not telling us, and I have no idea what most of that is, but what I do know is that you're a lot more than some random meteor freak. You're gonna be able to do anything you want; you're gonna be strong, powerful, and—I'm not completely sure but you are here for a reason, and it's not to be a business tycoon. You're really gonna be somebody some day." My brother nods, like he wants to change the subject. He's still confused, but I can't expect everything to happen overnight.

"I still don't like the idea of Dad hurting you," the kid tells me grumpily. "Especially since you don't know anything about me. Maybe you're not helping anyone special. Maybe we should just let him do what he wants to who he wants, and then we'll spend time helping each other whenever he leaves us alone. I could just as easily be a meteor freak."

"No, not just as easily and, even if you were, someone gave you these abilities. There's a reason you are the way you are, and I'm stronger than you think. I can handle what he's doing. You're not—I know how this sounds but, you're_ not _a Luthor. You couldn't handle what he's doing to us. He would destroy you. And I can't let that happen." It takes a lot of convincing, but I manage to, at least for now, get Lucas to trust that I know what I'm doing as far as everything else goes, we'll just have to wait and see what happens.


	3. Chapter 3

"And all she wants is just a little piece of this dream, is that too much to ask

Author's Note: I'm probably not going to include actual descriptions of the rape scenes, but this chapter does have a quick mention of a few unsavory things, drug use, a sexually suggestive nightmare, and a quick description of non-sexual physical abuse.

"And all she wants is just a little piece of this dream, is that too much to ask?  
With a safe home, and a warm bed, on a quiet little street.  
All she wants is just that something to hold onto, that's all she needs.  
If I could be like that, I would give anything  
Just to live one day, in those shoes.  
If I could be like that, what would I do? " 3 Doors Down.

Brother from Another Planet Chapter Three: in which the brother's Luthor bring their plan to fruition, and finally get to meet Miss. Chloe Sullivan. Also Lucas encounters a slight problem when he comes in contact with a certain Smallville resident.

Two Weeks, four phone calls, and eleven emails later, Lucas and Chloe Sullivan and I don't know much more than when we started, but we do have a plan, sort of. We _do_ know this much, my brother and I have to go to Smallville and meet this young woman. Getting there shouldn't be too hard. I just have to convince Lionel that I'd ever want to go to the place where I was nearly killed, and traumatized. I have one idea, but still don't know for sure. I told Lucas that I knew what I was going to do, but since I'm going to be up all night anyway, I might as well try to learn as much as humanly possible.

At 10:30 the kid walks off to go to bed for the night. At 11:00 PM Lionel enters my bedroom, stays for a while, agreeing to stay away from Lucas (not that I believe him 100) and leaves around 12:45. I spend the next hour laying face up on my mattress, staring at the glow in the dark stars and planets my mother had somebody paint on the ceiling of my bedroom, for my fifth birthday. They radiate a pale milky glow that almost seems to help me relax. The air conditioner switches on and off five times before I'm able to get up and go over to the computer, where I fall asleep, and drift off into a strange dream.

_XX_

_Lucas and I are running away from home. We stand on the side of some major highway, him hiding behind my back, me with my thumb straight out, pointed up towards the purple sky and pale green stars. A big rig truck pulls up alongside us, and the passenger side door opens. The man is slightly older than our father, with an ordinary-looking face. _

"_You boys need a ride?" he asks. I turn to face Lucas who only shrugs, looking at me passively as if to say, you're the boss. I trust you. It certainly seems safe, despite the man's eyes. For some reason when I look into the guy's eyes I am reminded of our father, and yet we get into the truck with him all the same. The kid sits in the back of the cab, behind my seat, and I'm up front with the driver. After a few miles his face begins to morph. This is starting to seem like a really bad idea; the man could easily be Lionel's twin brother, if he had one. Lionel II reaches across the seat, squeezing my left thigh through a pair of skin tight blue jeans. "Want some?" Driver asks, lighting a hand-rolled cigarette, and smiling like a jack-o-lantern. "that'll make you boys feel real good," he says, and even though I know better than to trust this freak—who's fingers are slowly crawling across my lap, trying to reach a very dangerous spot. I take the joint and smoke more than half of it in two puffs. In the dream I fall asleep (pass out from whatever he gave me?) and as I'm starting to come around I realize that my body has been paralyzed but my mind is fully aware of everything happening around us. All I can do now is listening while the driver talks to Lionel via an intercom. "Yes, Sir, Mr. Luthor, I have the boys, and I'm bringing them home for you. Really? You're in Japan until Tomorrow? Well, what am I supposed to do with these boys until then? A hotel room, on you? Well, thank you Mr. Luthor. Yes, I'll take good care of your sons for you." _

XX

Luckily a knock on the door wakes me up, and I don't have to finish the nightmare. I'm dressed in only a pair of pajama bottoms, and boxers, so I grab my t-shirt from the floor, and put it on as I make my way to the door, as I ask, "Who's there?" A small, scared voice replies.

"It's me," he says and I find myself wishing we had created a password or something. _Don't be stupid, _the reasonable part of my brain answers. _Lionel wouldn't bother to knock, let alone use the kid to get into my bedroom._ I open the door and let Lucas in. "Sorry," he tells me sadly, staring at the comic book littered floor underneath both of us. "I had a nightmare, couldn't get back to sleep. Went walking around the house, and saw a light on in your room. I guess we're both scared about tomorrow. Can I stay here until the morning?" I nod, ushering him in, carefully checking the hallway.

Surprisingly he doesn't go right for the computer which currently shows the custom screensaver I created, a slideshow of images from different _Warrior Angel_ comics, TV shows, and movies. In stead he curls up on my mattress, with his back to the wall. He looks almost exactly as I feel, and because of this I know that he needs me to leave him alone for now, so I get back on the web. Mostly I'm scouring the Internet for more information on who my "brother" is and where he may have come from before he came to live with us, but don't find anything.

"What are you doing?" Lucas asks after about half an hour, without sitting up or uncurling from the fetal position.

"Trying to find some information about you online. Basically I'm stalling so that I don't have to be the one to hack into Dad's email account, or worse…"

"Why not use his computer?"

"It's a tad bit easier to get into his files if I did, but I'd have to go into his office to do that. If Dad catches me on his laptop, he'll probably shoot me, and maybe you too."

"He wouldn't really do that, would he?" Lucas has been this way ever since he was a toddler. When he gets scared or nervous, he asks questions, lots of them, and nothing calms him down unless you sit there and answer them, so that's what I've been doing lately. That's what I'm gonna do now.

"Our father has sex with us. Nothing is too low down and dirty for him. Relax, he'll never catch me. This teacher at school showed me how to route my IP through a dozen different servers. If Lionel ever realizes that someone's been accessing his information, he'll only find out that someone in China is trying to fuck with Luthorcorp. The only problem is that I'm gonna need to go through every single email, file, and document, for the exact same amount of time. Then, he won't realize that somebody's looking for personal information. He'll assume it's something related to his precious, little company."

"Why did you pick China? I mean out of all the places in the world, you had a reason right? Otherwise you would have said nothing." Lucas slowly uncurls himself, but still lies on his side, watching me with those giant, doe-like eyes.

"Lionel's doing business with some dickhead who in China, who's company he's trying to steal," I explain, spinning around on my chair so were looking each other in the face. "The teacher showed me a lot about hacking…I've gotten into the Luthorcorp database a couple of times before, but I got scared and quit before I could do anything." Lucas raises his eyebrows and I know exactly what he's about to ask. _Did that guy hurt you? _"He didn't make me do anything, well—it's not important. I think mostly he liked looking at me, even if I kept my clothes on. The guy got fired at the beginning of last semester, and he went to jail 'cuz he got caught doing stuff with another student…"

"Tell me more about the computer stuff. Nothing too technical, or complicated. I just—what are you gonna do with Dad's files and work stuff?" I climb off the chair, walk over to the bed, and sit down next to Lucas, close enough so he can see every expression on my face, and so I can touch his arm or shoulder if I have to, but far enough to allow him the personal space he needs.

"I'm going to break into the company's computer system—all of the computers and laptops and stuff at the officer are connected, and all of the files go into the same place. Dad's even got it set up so he can read people's personal emails if they send one from work. I have to go through everything, even though I'm not gonna actually look at most of them, and I have to leave them all open for the same amount of time. If he ever tries to trace what someone opened he won't go as far as to check how long they looked at something, but it never hurts to protect yourself. If I look at your files a lot longer than something else, it'll be obvious what we tried to find, and he'll know it was me. Of course if we don't find anything, well—it's a big risk and if Dad ever realizes what I did, he's gonna—well it won't be good."

"Worse than what he's already done to us?" Lucas's question is exceptionally surprising. He's a lot stronger than I would have thought, in his heart; at least this is a pleasant surprise.

"No, probably just more of the usual. To be perfectly honest, I've never done anything like this before. It's difficult, to say the least, to try and figure out how he might respond."

"I don't ever really get into trouble. What does he do when you screw up?" _Now there's a good fucking question._

"It depends," I tell him, unable to put my anger, fear, and frustration into words.

"What do you mean?" Lucas is more scared now than he was when he first entered my room after the nightmare.

"When mom was in the hospital last year he used to make me—he wouldn't let me come home to be with her. I remember you called and told me it was really bad, and I begged him to let me leave, even for just a few days. Other than that, I don't think he's ever actually spanked me, but Dad used to grab me by the shoulders and shake me, he threw my body across the room once…it's almost funny. The stuff he does when I'm in trouble is pretty much the same as his normal behavior." Lucas and I both suck in our breath. He nods once, solemnly. Lucas and I stay up all night, too jumpy to even nap. I go through my plan step by step (in an attempt to calm us both down) twice and explain the day's schedule ever couple of hours.

Morning rolls around, and Lucas wants to race downstairs to the kitchen with the day's first light, but I make him wait until 10:15, while we rehearse his lines for our conversation with Dad, in case there is one. "Dad should have left for work by now," I tell him confidently as he races down the hall ahead of me, his sneakers squeaking on the floor tiles. Then the kid stops cold, standing silently about five feet ahead of me, but around the corner where I can see what he sees.

"Since when are my whereabouts such a concern for you two?" Lionel's voice isn't angry, or even upset, but there is something I can't quite identify in his tone. "What are you boys planning for this afternoon, hmm?" His hand reaches out to clutch Lucas's shoulder, but I can only stand in the doorway, watching helplessly. I open my mouth to speak, and he snaps at me. "I didn't ask you, Lex. Let your brother speak for himself."

"Lex found a support group on the computer, for survivors of the meteor shower. It's in Smallville at 3:00. We thought you wouldn't, we didn't think you would let us go. So, uh, that's why we were hopping you already left." I spent half of last night talking. The rest of the time I had him practice that speech until it sounded like his words instead of mine. Of course I knew our father would never believe it, but a good cover story is better than none, and if Lucas can lie well enough, he could say that we're going on a picnic and Dad would leave it at that. Two sets of eyes stare into each other, one daring the match to fold, the other all but begging to be freed. Lionel nods, lowering his gaze to the newspaper and his cup of coffee. "Be home by 10:00," he tells us, and walks out of the room, brushing up against me none-too-subtly on his way. When he touches me I'm disgusted as my skin breaks out in goose bumps, more because he notices it than because it's a sign of weakness. I'm aware that I'm pathetic; it doesn't bother me, unless he sees it. When I'm alone, at least then he doesn't get the satisfaction of knowing how badly he's messed me up.

"Breakfast first, then I'll drive us down to the—uh, Talon coffee shop, where we're meeting," I pause allowing my brother to speak.

"Chloe Sullivan, who's gonna take us to the torch office at Smallville High School and show us what research she's gathered. Then I'm gonna give her a demonstration, and she's probably gonna have questions. Do you think she found anything about where I came from?"

"I dunno. Want me to continue with our plan for today? After that we come home for "family dinner" with the jerk, and last but not least if I have to, I'll break into dear ol' Dad's computer and figure out who you are."

"How do you know he has anything on there?" He sits down at the table, pouring eggs, bacon, pancakes, and hash browns onto his plate, pours himself a big glass of orange juice and sits down next to me.

"I don't."

"What if you do all of that, don't learn anything, and then Dad finds out just the same?" Once again my little brother is terrified, and I'm not much help because I am just as scared as he is. "Nevermind, I don't wanna know."

"If we get caught, I can take the blame. I'll pretend it was all me; tell him I broke into his computer just because I'm an obnoxious brat who wanted to sabotage his stupid company." My brother's eyes are the size of saucers, but he keeps stuffing food into his mouth anyway.

"Why are you being so nice? I always thought you hated me." Once again, there's no good answer to that question, hell there aren't too many ways to answer it period. I can't say something like _I did hate you,_ because hate is the wrong word. I never hated him. _I was—angry, frustrated, and out of my mine jealous of you, but the rest is just what Lionel wanted us to think, what he wanted us to feel._

"I didn't, he wanted us to think the other one…Dad would like it if we fought all the time because then we'd not only be—if we like each other we can team up against him. You wouldn't need to be as smart and on top of things and I could be the same weak, pathetic, wussy—wheezing—" he grabs my body in a tight squeeze, and it's been so long since I've had one, I almost forgot what a real hug was. "Don't say it."

"You're not weak! You can deal with the stuff Dad does to you a lot better than me. You stood up for me, let him do horrible things to you because I _might _be somebody special. That takes more strength than I have."

"Alright, enough, I don't want to do this right now. That wasn't even my point. Dad wanted us working as hard as we could to be as strong as we could. He wanted to make us monsters and it almost worked," I stopped, praying that he would let me get through this quickly and not have to tell my brother how close I came to hating him. "But then this happened, and we're gonna be okay now. I promise. Now let's get moving before you eat another 1000 worth of food."

"Just because you're having grapefruit and dry toast doesn't mean I can't have real food," Lucas says with a small smile, as he stands up and jogs out of the room. "You're gonna drive?"

"Of course. All the limo drivers work for Dad. I don't care what they say; we can't trust them with something this big." The drive down to Smallville is uneventful, us Luthor boys sitting in silence, watching cornfields go by.

The coffee shop itself is cute, Native American décor, and a cute little waitress with dark brown hair, almond shaped eyes and a pretty necklace with a green stone on it at the register. Lucas notices her immediately and starts to head right for the pretty girl.

"Wait, come back here," I whisper.

"Why?"

"What are you gonna say? Order something, and when you do, it's important to ask for the right thing. You don't want the girl to think you're a dork."

"I'm getting a hot chocolate," he says defensively.

"Order a cafe mocha. Decaf if you have to, but not the other thing."

"What the heck is a mocha?"

"It's like a hot chocolate for grownups." Lucas makes his _what the fuck_ face. "It's got a shot of espresso in the drink."

"Yuck!"

"Only eight-year-olds drink hot chocolate. Besides, you're not going to drink it. Ordering the drink gives you an excuse to talk to the girl."

"How do I talk to her?" he asks, pouting as I roll my eyes, and take him to the counter.

"Follow my lead," another whisper. "Hi, we're new around here, and my brother here doesn't drink a lot of coffee so he's sort of unsure what to order. I'll have a non-fat latte, but maybe you can give him a hand picking something out. Lucas, why don't you tell this nice—Lucas are you alright?" I practically scream when I turn around only to discover that the kid is doubled over, clutching his stomach weakly, his skin turning the color of milk, and he's breathing shallowly.

"Is he okay?" the girl asks, reaching for the telephone. "Should I call for an ambulance or something?" At first I'm surprised by the genuine concern in her voice, until I remember that she doesn't actually know who we are. _Wow_, I think, _real small town hospitality_. Lucas shakes his head, with whatever little amount of strength he has left.

"I'm sure he just needs some fresh air, but we are supposed to be meeting somebody here, a Chloe Sullivan. If you see her, can you let Miss. Sullivan know that we're right outside?"

"Oh sure, Chloe and I are _best friends_! We've done everything together ever since the sixth grade. I'll have her meet you boys out front." It's weird, but just as soon as we get away from the brunette, even before exiting the café, my brother is able to stand up straight, and breathe normally. His skin regains its usual tint so quickly that I'm starting to wonder if he was ever sick at all.

"What happened in there?" I press the back of my right hand to Lucas's forehead, while the left tries to compare his temperature to my own, not that I can tell anything. He feels normal, but it's hard to tell what normal is. "Are you alright? I've never seen you like that before."

"I never get sick, but while we were inside the coffee shop, all of the sudden I started to feel like I had a big cage around my chest, crushing my ribcage, pressing down on my lungs and heart. It was hard to breathe my heart started beating really fast, I was nauseous, and it hurt all over. I was so scared, Lex. I thought I was gonna die. What do you think caused that?" I sigh, shrugging my shoulders, and from the corner of my eye, see a moderately attractive girl with shoulder-length blonde hair, In one hand she held what looked like a bucket-sized thermos, and in the other a single coffee cup with the word _Talon_ on it in red lettering.

"You must be Alexander," the girl said. "Lana told me that your brother got sick and had to leave before she could get your drink." When I reach for my wallet Chloe smiles and says, "Don't worry, Lana said it's on the house."

"Hi, I'm Lex, and this is my kid brother Lucas."

"I thought you said he doesn't get sick, or hurt," she pried, shaking our hands quickly, taking a small notebook and pen out of her bag, and starts to take notes.

"I don't. I mean, I haven't gotten sick, not before today. One second I was fine, and the next it was like I was dying. Then we came out here and…" Lucas lowers his head, staring at the ground. She looks confused, but it's hard to tell if she thinks we're lying or if this is just as confusing for her as for us. "Would you like a demonstration of my abilities?"

"So you're serious about the whole getting sick thing? This is so weird; I've never heard of anything like that. You've really never felt like you did before going inside the talon today?"

"Well, not that I can remember, but it was _really_ bad. Nobody could forget something like what happened to me in there. Lex, should I show her what I can do out here, or should I…?"

"I don't think you should do that right out in the open," Miss. Sullivan explains. "We could go to the school, there aren't any security cameras, and it's the summer so the place is empty. Unless you think we're going to need even more privacy than that."

"No, the school will be fine." First we drive out there, park near the gym, and then walk to the track where Chloe takes out a stop watch and tell Lucas to run five laps, "That's two mile," she explains, her hand ready to hit the start button. Just like in the backyard, the kid takes off with so much power that the a giant gust of air and a whooshing sound are easier to keep track of than how long it took him to go down the asphalt ring. "Ooh—kay, wasn't really expecting that one. How long can you go on doing it?"

"I dunno. Once last year, I missed the bus home and didn't wanna call Dad at work just to get a ride. So I ran the whole way. That was like fourteen, maybe fifteen miles, and I wasn't even tired. So, I can probably go anywhere." The strength demonstration isn't as great as I would have hoped, but b the end of the day, even Miss Sullivan (the self proclaimed expert of all things related to the meteor shower) has no idea who Lucas is or what might have given him these abilities. "I've never seen anyone like you. The things you can do—it's amazing, but you're defiantly _not_ a meteor freak."

There is one bit of good news, however. She managed to get into Lionel's computer—we didn't ask how and she didn't tell us—and learned that he had been renting a storage unit in the city for about nine years Chloe told us he got it a week after the Lucas was adopted, and that it's fairly large. She didn't know what number it was or how to find that out, but at least it's a start. We all agreed that he's probably keeping the ship in there. After promising to let her know if we find anything there (or if we figure out what caused the kid to get sick) we left and went home for the day.


	4. Chapter 4

"We have to get into that storage unit," Lucas shouted, as he paced back and forth across a small patch of carpet in my bedroom. "It's been four days! We know where it is. I can run in there, break the lock into thousands of pieces, and be gone before the security cameras even see me."

"No, you'll be in and out before they can identify you, but the image of _something_ zooming all around the lot will appear on the screen, and if Dad knows anything about your background he will know that it's you. And even if he doesn't know about your abilities now, he will after he sees that video."

"So change the way the cameras work. Hack into the system and get it to play the same shot over and over like they do on TV." Lucas was more upset than he should have been in this specific situation. I think he was nervous more than anything, but didn't want me to know that. So, he used anger to cover up his fear.

"It's not that easy, or rather, I'm just not that good. Hacking into Dad's computer files is one thing, but what you're talking about—it's completely different, and here's something else you haven't considered. Isn't it convenient that we found exactly what we were looking for in less than a week? Maybe Lionel knows what we're trying to find and this is either a trap or a diversion, or maybe he's just storing old baby photos and toys and everything else Mom couldn't bear to throw away." I wanted to calm him down. I wanted to make him feel better. I wanted to rescue my carpet from being completely destroyed.

"Or maybe there's some clue hidden somewhere inside that will help us figure out who I am and where I cam from. What if we can…Don't you want answers? About the meteor shower, me, you, everything?" The answer came immediately, _yes of course, who wouldn't_, but I didn't say that. The kid wasn't thinking clearly. He was making decisions based on his emotions, without any calculation or forethought. He had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, nor had he considered the millions of things that could go wrong

"Yes I wanna know all that stuff and more, but if we don't go about this—if we don't plan everything out, and do it all perfectly, we will get caught and Dad will separate and destroy us." My little brother didn't ask how. It was the only question on his mind after what I had just told him, but he was too terrified of my answer.

'Remember what happened in the coffee shop"? he asked. I nodded. "Did he have something to do with it?" I didn't think so, and shook my head. "But something made me sick, and if Lionel ever figures out what that something is, we're really gonna be in trouble. He'll be able to do whatever he wants and I'm won't have a chance at fighting back. I sighed, turning away from my computer, looking him right in the face.

"We don't know what made you sick, but if Lionel had any idea about it, he'd have taken advantage of it, used the substance to hurt you a long time ago. Now listen, we have to be smart about this thing," I explained, running a hand over my head. We go at night, dress in black, wear ski masks, gloves, and shoes with no patterns on the soles. You run up and spray paint all of the camera lenses. Like with the computer files, we have to break into other units, smash stuff, paint gang tags on the walls and on people's things."

"Maybe we should steal stuff too?" he offered, trying to sound smart.

"No, that would be a very bad idea. The police are going to investigate the break-ins. If we have things from other people's storage units in our home, I go to jail or juvenile hall or something, and then he's alone with you. I'm going to think of everything. I'll go into our space while you run around and get deal with the other stuff. Then come back and we explore it together. Maybe we find something, maybe we don't. Worst case scenario, it gets us out of the house for a couple hours, and we find some old photo albums." My brother stopped pacing just long enough to stare at me as if to say, _can we really do this? _I nodded, stood up, walked to his side, and gave the kid a hug.

"I wanna go tonight," he said, in an extremely un-Luthor-like manner. "Why not? I wanna know what Da—Lionel is hiding, and I wanna know now!" This time he didn't scream as loudly as before, but we both checked to be sure no one had overheard us. Lucas was frustrated (not that I blamed him) and he needed to be calm to execute my plan without making a lot of dangerous mistakes. I told him this. "I can be calm by tonight. I can do this, really, and don't tell me we need more time; we went to Smallville ten days ago. If he knew what we were doing Dad would have done something by now, right?" The kid was partially right, but he didn't seem to know our father very well. There were a lot of reasons for him not to bring up our little field trip. 1. he knew it was harmless. Even if evidence from the meteor shower had once been in that town, he had long since snatched it up. Therefore, we could drive back and forth from Metropolis every day and still not find a single thing, 2. Even if we could find something there, we wouldn't be able to connect, for instance, a spaceship to Lucas, Lionel, or the farm couple, 3. Lucas could just as easily be one of those people with meteor rock induced powers, and 4. Lionel could always say he didn't know what we were talking about.

"Because he might be waiting to see what our next move is, and if he notices us sneaking out in the middle of the night and then finds your adoption papers or whatever, are missing, he's gonna put two and two together real fast."

Lucas's eyes were wide and sad, when he said, "how long are you gonna make us wait before we can go see what's in that room?"

"I looked over his schedule. Father is heading off to Tokyo this afternoon. As of right now, he has no plans to bring you or me with, and he won't change his mind. It's tough to get laid when you have to explain how come your 8-year-old is still sharing a bed with you, or why he's bleeding, curled up in the fetal position. Even the most egger young woman wouldn't let that go." Lucas stared at me oddly. "What you thought he brought me on business trips so I could learn how Daddy does his job?" I asked, with a fake little kid lisp.

"Well, yeah, I mean…you're gonna be the one that he's gonna give the company to, eventually. Lex, I go to public school. Do you really think he expects me to do anything?" he asked, and suddenly I knew that he really meant it.

"Okay, first of all, Brightfield Academy is _not_ a public school—hence the blazer, and ridiculously well funded art programs, and second, I'm out at Excelsior because I managed to get myself kicked out of every exclusive prep school in the state, and Mom said she'd leave him if he sent me to London, or Chicago, or Gotham city. Lionel expects us to fight to the death for control of Luthorcorp. That's why he treats us so differently. We talked about this before."

"He doesn't actually have a favorite, he just gives us both special privileges, so that we'll think he likes the other one better, and work really, really hard to get on his good side?" I was proud of the kid; two weeks ago I never would have believed him capable of such extrapolation. "What do you think we're gonna find?"

"Honestly, I have no idea," I admitted, turning back to my computer. "Wanna play chess?" He sort of laughed, but also blushed, at the same time. "What about Zombie Nightmare? Do you now that one? Come on, I'll show you. The game's connected to the Internet so we can play against people all over the world." Lucas took the controller from nervously. "You could watch the first time, see how it's done."

"I dunno," he whispered, standing up, sitting back down, and standing once again. "I think I was doing a lot better when I was pacing," He got up once more and went to the window, staring outside. "You never said when we're gonna leave to go to the storage unit."

"His private jet goes wheels up at 11:30 am," I explained, leaving the game and standing at his side. "Lucas, stop. You're going to wear a hole in my carpet, and he's gonna figure out that you aren't normal." My brother stopped, looking down, then running a hand through his hair. "You're scared. I get that, I know, because I get scared too, all the time. It hurts, very badly, but—that's something you'll learn to live with."

"I don't care about that! I mean, of course I care, but that's not what I'm freaking out over. We don't know what we're going to find, or who I am. What if there's something wrong with me, Lex? I could be one of those meteor freaks, or something a lot worse!" I grabbed my little brother, wrapping my arms around him in a tight hug. I squeezed him, rubbing his back and rocking slowly.

"You wanna go over there now, don't you, kiddo?" I asked and he sobbed into my shirt. "Okay," I whispered, kissing his hair, like Mom used to do when we were sick as kids—or when I was sick as a kid anyway—in an attempt to comfort him. "We'll go tonight, okay?" He nodded solemnly, and then looked over at the computer, like a typical twelve-year-old. It may have been just before 12:00, but it didn't matter. We had to do it now before he freaked out completely, and lost it. "Go get changed, black clothes, I've got the masks, we have to walk or else…he'll know and do something. I dunno what, but it won't be good." Lucas zoomed out of the room and was back—dressed from head to toe in black before I was able to start taking off my pants. "I um—would you mind not watching me, I get weird about stuff like this. He hates that about me—okay, I'm ready to go," I announced, and then, all of the sudden, he lifted me up and started to race off again. We must have been going at least 60 miles an hour. "Stop!" I screamed.

"What?" he asked, innocently. "I was just—I was trying to get us out of here as quickly as possible," Lucas explained, watching sadly as I shook my head. "What? What did I do wrong?"

"Not inside the mansion, you can't just show off like that. We're gonna get caught. If Lionel finds out what you're capable of, he'll turn you not a murderous, world- conquering monster. And he…I don't, I'm sorry, I didn't wanna scare you, just don't want him to be able to hurt or control you."

"Do you remember when I was in kindergarten, and that fifth grader tried to beat me up? I pushed him so hard he went flying across the playground, and he went through a door?"

"Vaguely," I whispered, gently placing my finger over his lips. "We gotta be quiet, don't wanna disturb—if he's awake and hears us, I'm gonna hafta do some fancy tricks to explain what I'm doing here," I told him.

"But he would—if we—you're telling me that you're gonna let him _hurt_ you, right?" I wasn't completely sure how to answer that question, mainly because the only real response was, _well yeah, of course._ "Maybe we should take turns letting him do stuff, so that neither one of us gets too messed up."

"Lucas, I'm your big brother, I'm supposed to protect you. It's my job. If I let Lionel turn you into me, into somebody who feels the way I do, thinks the way I do, who hurts like me—I'll never forgive myself. You're special. You're gonna be somebody one day."

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," he cried softly, and the two of us walled out of the mansion together. Then, I let him pick me up and carry me to the storage lot.

"Okay, um…wow," was all I could think of to say when my little brother put me down. "Now if you were to say—swing me around by my wrist like you do with a little kid…no—don't actually do it! I was just thinking that you're sort of like a human rollercoaster. It's cool." Lucas smiled, and started to stare very intensely at the buildings ahead of us. He would look towards one for several seconds, then shift his gaze slightly, and watch the next one. "What are you doing?" I asked, nudging him in the ribcage. A sudden, horrific pain exploded from my elbow, as if I'd hit a brick wall. Even though it was only Lucas, I tried to prevent myself from screaming in agony.

"You need to warn me if you want to try and do something like that. I could really hurt you." Lucas focused in on me. "It doesn't look broken…I was looking through the different garages so I could figure out which one is ours." I rolled my eyes. "What?"

"I already know which unit is ours. Its number 331. I think we should put the ski masks on now, and no more super speed. Could be security cameras all over the place. And don't use my name. If you hafta—call me Red."

"Red?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow. "Oh and call me—um…I dunno. Can't think of a good nickname for myself." I smiled, patting the kid on the shoulder, much more gently this time.

"That was my nickname when I was a little kid. They used to call me Wheezy too…because of my asthma. Of course, after the meteor shower, it…well they both went away."

"I'm sorry," Lucas said, pulling the hat over his face. I looked at my brother there, and for a second, I almost didn't recognize him. "I'm kind of scared," he admitted, walking with me. "And you never gave me a nickname."

"I could call you Skywalker, like in star wars…you know?" He shrugged. _I don't think I like it._ "We could be Red and Black, like in checkers." Lucas giggled but nodded. "Truth be told, I'm scared too. Maybe we'll find a spaceship in there and it'll shoot a laser beam at me when I open the door."

"Well I can go first, if you're too chicken," he offered. I pushed him, not all that hard or anything, but pushed him all the same. We reached the locker, number 331, and stood staring at it for a long time. "I'm sort of nervous. Maybe you should do that thing with your eyes."

"I already am." I may never have liked Lucas much before all of this, but I sure as heck knew him, especially his moods. When he was nervous, he talked, a lot. When he was depressed he yelled. When he was mad he got sarcastic. When he was worried about school or something less than important, he'd tell jokes, but I knew that if he got really quiet, he was terrified. This was how he acted when he came to me after the first time—I think it was the first time—Dad ever molested and raped him. I considered hugging or touching him on the shoulder, but worried it might make things worse. So I offered up my hand for him to squeeze my fingers.

"What do you see?" I wondered how hard I would need to concentrate in order to be able to look through the door on my own. "Black, whatever it is, you can tell me." My little brother shook his head. "Oh come on, Kid. It can't be that bad." Carefully I reached into my pocket, for the lock picking stuff. Lucas took my hand, pulling it away from the door.

"Wait," he called out. "We can't do this. We can't go in there. I'm so scared. I mean—look. I saw it. I know what's in there. Why do we hafta open the door?" he asked, tugging on my shirt. "Let's leave."

"In the comic books, Warrior Angel came to Earth in a spaceship and there was a—a...hologram, a message—an important message programmed inside. There has to be something there. We should go in. If Dad ever finds out we were here, I'll say…just don't touch anything and stand behind me. He'll never know we were both doing something bad."

"There is something in there that I can't identify. What am I? Did I come here in that? Where did? I—how did I get here? What am I?" Lucas sobbed, clutching onto me. I held him for twenty minutes before he was relaxed enough to look up at me sadly.

"You okay?" I asked, massaging his shoulders, and arms. He rubbed his shirtsleeve across his face, sniffling slightly. "I don't know how exactly to answer your questions. I'm not sure. We'll learn something when we go in there, I promise."

"Alright." Lucas finally surrendered. There was a craft—thing—inside, this weird, saucer shaped object that seemed to be made out of metal but I couldn't tell how to get into it. The thing was completely solid except for a small octagonal hole, near the rim.

"Holly crap," was all that he could say. I nodded. "What goes here?" He reached out to feel the shape with his fingers. I had no idea, and signified such with a shrug. Do you thing—it looks like it's lock. Maybe this is where the key goes." I nodded, because I couldn't think of anything else to do. Unfortunately, when we left that night, we didn't

When we got back, Lionel was standing in the living room, talking to his driver, surrounded by his briefcase, and travel bags. I sighed and pushed the kid out of the way, hoping that whatever my father was waiting for, it had nothing to do with him.

"Lex, what are you doing up so early?" he asked, patting his leg, as if to say, _come here_. "I'm fairly certain this is the first time I have ever seen you out of bed before 2:00 in the afternoon since—well since you were a very little boy."

"Maybe if you stopped coming into my room in the middle of the night, I'd be able to get to sleep before 4:00 am, and then I'd be able to get up early," I replied, coolly. Lionel chuckled, his eyes roaming all over me.

"That will be all, Darnel," he said, dismissing the limo driver, who then left, the room completely empty save for me, my father, and his briefcase. "Come here," he ordered. I walked up to the man, my eyes facing the ground, pretending to be a well behaved little angel. Dad checked to his left and to his right, before grabbing me by my lapels, and lifting me up off the ground. Then, he smacked me, hard, right across the face. "Don't you ever disrespect me in front of them help, or anyone else for that matter! Do you understand?" He still had me by my shirt, but we were at a far more uncomfortable position now. He was holding me close to him. I felt myself starting to make a soft, pathetic sound, and although I tried to control it, tried to stop, I still whimpered, and was dropped. Lionel threw me onto the sofa, looked down at me disgustedly, picked up his case, and walked away. "I'll be back in a week. Don't get into any trouble while I'm gone."

I wanted to tell him to go to Hell, but could only bring myself to lie on the ground where, weakly. It was all I could do not to start crying. _You stupid baby! Loser! Dumbass! No wonder he thinks he can treat you like crap; you are crap! _ Lucas raced in after less than a minute, dropping to my side, and shaking me slightly.

"Lex, Lex are you okay? I'm so sorry. I shouldn't of left you alone with him. I—" He cut himself off, seeing my reaction. "So, what do we do now?" he asked, kindly, but also scared, unsure of himself. I stood up, and shrugged. It was an uncommon action for me, but one I had been doing more and more ever since my brother had come to me with his secret. "Dad is gone; I watched his limo drive off. They're all the way on Parker Avenue by now. Pretty soon he'll be at the airport, and we are gonna have the whole forty rooms to ourselves. We should start looking for that octagon thingy." I nodded, dusting my clothes off self-consciously.

"You saw him and me, just now? You were watching?" I asked, running my hand over my head, nervously. Lucas tried to explain that he was worried about me, but I saw something strange in his eyes, in the way he was looking at me, something I couldn't completely understand. "Look, we don't even know that Dad was the one to find the octagon. If it broke off the craft, it could have gone anywhere. Maybe he has it; maybe he doesn't. It could be in his office, in his bedroom, or any one of another hundred million locations. For all we know it could be in that castle in Smallville." Lucas looked up at me sad, with those big, brown, puppy dog eyes. "I'm not saying we shouldn't look. It's just like before. I'm trying to prepare you for the possibility that we might not find anything."

"Lionel would wanna keep it close to him. He might have even tried to use it to open the ship, but in one comic book I read, only Warrior Angel could get into his special floating fortress—Devilicus tried to get in; he even had the key, but it wouldn't open. Maybe that ship is the same way."

"That is entirely possible," I suggested, but the kind already knew what I was thinking. _That's just a comic book. Some of it is based on things that might happen in real life, but most of it is made up. You're probably just a meteor freak. I mean, come on…that ship thing could be a new age coffee table for all we know._ "Look, we shouldn't be worrying about any of that right now. There's no way we can be sure of anything just yet. I hope we can find the "key" thing, I hope it makes whatever it is open up. I hope we get some answers from inside it, but you have to be prepared to understand that we might not learn anything, just like this morning. It could be a dead end. It could have all the answers we could ever want. I just don't know. There's nothing we can do yet. I want you to go to your room and try to get some sleep. I'm gonna do some more research online."

"Can I sleep in your room?" he asked, shyly. I was stunned. Not by his request, but by the way he asked it. _Go easy on the kid; he's just scared, and you know what that's like. _I nodded, and we went upstairs.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Later, Lucas and I walked around the mansion, carefully searching each room, going through it at normal speed, looking for loose floor boards, going trough cabinets, drawers, closets, boxes, and whatever else we could find. We passed Lionel's bedroom three times; avoiding it for obvious reason, while claming that he wouldn't keep anything of importance in there. While we checked the place where my mother had spent the last few months of her life, the kid sat down on her bed, picking up a pillow, and hugging it close to his chest, inhaling sharply.

"The pillows don't smell like her anymore. They haven't for months. I stole one, right after she died, slept with it like a teddy bear for weeks, but then it just..." I sighed "I guess everything fades, eventually." He dropped the item, but didn't get up right away. Instead, he sat there, staring at me.

"How come Dad—Lionel—got rid of all her stuff? He took down her pictures, pt all her jewelry, clothes, knickknacks, perfumes, make up—well everything—into boxes. He even took off his wedding ring the day after the funeral. He did everything that day. I know 'cuz I was with him, when he put all the stuff away. He made me help him pack."

"He made you?" I asked, half shocked. Our mother had been gone less than a year, and based on Lucas's statements about his abilities e could have ripped the bastard apart even back then. I found it hard to believe he could tell the kid to do something like _that_ and Lucas would actually listen. At least, I did until I realized exactly why our father—for lack of a better term—had the kid under his thumb. "When did he start….when did…I'm sorry." We checked all over Mom's sick room, and finally came to the last part of the house, the lion's den. We turned the doorknob, pulled it open, and stepped inside. We started searching through his stuff, as much as the idea disgusted and horrified us. I picked through his dresser, pushing his clothes around, checking for false bottoms, or a fake backing. I still didn't find anything. Next we started going trough a small filing cabinet. "Damnit! This last drawer is stuck, and I can't get the leverage to…" Before I could finish, my sentence, he was at my side, popping it open, like a bee tab.

"The octagon's not in there, Lex. I looked all over with my x-ray vision. That's sort of a lame thing to call it, isn't it?" _Sounds like what're you're doing, seems okay to me. _"We already checked every room, and every closet. There's nowhere else to look! It's not here!"

"I know," I said, quietly standing up, and kicking a metallic bin, watching as the contents spilled out all over the rug. "I hate this fucking room, and I hate this fucking house, and I hate being a Luthor, and I hate my life, and I hate him!" I slammed my foot into the bin over and over, even after my toes turned bright red and started to ache.

"Lex stop it,"" the kid cried, pulling me away, and hugging me. "Stop, you're gonna break your foot, and you don't hate him. Neither of us does. We can't because if we give up, he'll know, and never give us what we want." _I know, I know,_ I thought helplessly, and nodded.

"What if this thing is in the beach house or in Smallville, or at his office, or in his fucking pocket?" I asked. The kid looked away sadly. I bit down on my lip, feeling guilty, but at the same time we knew that this was a possibility. We had been afraid to say it until now, but we both had been worrying.

"I dunno," he admitted, as he started to scan the room again, checking for something he or I may have missed. I gave Lucas the space I would have wanted if I were the one hacking into a computer, or doing my thing. After a few minutes he turned his face away, and took my hand. I hugged him.Then he started to cry hysterically, pressing his face into my shoulder. Fifteen or twenty minutes went by before he was calmed down enough for me to feel like I could start talking to him.

"It's okay. I don't know what else to tell you, but we are going to figure this out. We are going to be alright. He lifted his head, eyes red-rimmed, and wet. He looked so sad, like he was much, much younger than he really was. I started to clean up the room, and tripped, landing on my stomach, face to face (so to speak) with a small metallic box. I picked the thing up and turned it over in my hand. It was had been in the drawer, a small gray thing, probably made of led or nickel, about 6"X8" plain, probably boring, but I hadn't seen it earlier. When my brother shrugged, I gave him an odd look. "There's nothing in there?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't see through it. I don't know. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before! I don't understand." I looked up at him. I wanted to say, _I'm sorry, _or _it's okay_, but I was too nervous, and a little excited.

I touched the lid, carefully, feeling for the edges, the place to push up, and open it. Lucas kneeled down beside me, and put his own hand on the box. I couldn't help but notice tat my fingers were shaking when I reached down, popping the top off. Then, we looked inside.


	5. Chapter 5

"Tell everybody  
Waitin' for Superman  
that they should try to hold on  
Best they can  
He hasn't dropped them  
Forgot them  
or anything  
It's just too heavy for Superman to lift," The Flaming Lips.

The box, of course, held exactly what we'd spent the whole day looking for, a flat, silvery-gray, octagon, with characters on it, in what looked like a foreign language. The letters were intricate, sophisticated, and unlike anything I had ever seen before. Some languages go left to right, others right to left, some even stack symbols on top of each other so they form columns, but this was…different. There were three items in one corner, stacked on top of each other, like a pyramid. Each symbol could have been a single letter, or a character made up of several letters or a group of characters in one to form some sort of phrase, or a sentence, or a compound word.

"What is it?" Lucas croaked, once more on the verge of tears. I am incredibly intelligent, and I don't say that to brag. It's true. My parents had me take an IQ test about seven or eight years ago, Stanford-Binet. I maxed out the scale. Because of my intelligence I'm often approached—at school, when Lionel takes me to work, and anywhere else I go—by people who want me to do work, take tests, write essays, or presentations for them. I've been offered protection—Oliver Queen—in exchange for term papers, sexual favors for taking the SATs—a guy named Jeremy who was my roommate when I was in 9th grade and he was a senior. The summer I was eleven I took a calculus course at Met-U. The professor—one of the most renowned men in his field—asked me to help him grade tests, quizzes, and even the final exam. I caught a bunch of errors he missed, some big, some small. In exchange for this, he wrote me a letter of recommendation. That alone will be enough to get me into the college of my choice Oxford, Harvard, MIT, anywhere. There is a point to all this rambling about my own brilliance. When I held the item in my hand, I was absolutely dumbfounded. For the first time I could remember, I was stumped. I did not know the answer, couldn't even make an educated guess. Lucas was desperate. He needed someone to explain what was happening, how to react, what to do, but I had couldn't help. I knew what he knew and nothing more.

Seeing that look in his eyes made me feel awful, like I was hurting him in some way. There was severe pain in pit of my stomach, the veins in my wrists felt as if they were filled with ice, and my heart was aching. My first instinct was to lie to him, tell the kid that I had super powers too, everyone did, or almost everybody, and I had just been playing an elaborate prank to make the guy feel bad, or something else that might ease his suffering. I hated telling him I did not know something, no matter how big or small my lack of knowledge was. "Lex?" His voice cracked. I sighed, running a nervous palm over the top and back of my head. He lowered his eyes to the ground, sadly, the corners of his mouth dipping down.

"I have absolutely no idea," I heard my voice admitting. Lucas allowed himself four, heaving, fantastically loud sobs, a total of maybe 30 seconds worth of crying, before his "Luthor training" kicked in, then the kid stopped. "I'm sorry, but I don't know. It's scary; I get that, but…" I shrugged, unable to finish my sentence. My brother wiped his face so quickly I could have missed it, or thought he was doing something other than getting rid of tears.

"Now what?" It wasn't the first time I'd been asked this question. Nor was it the first time I wasn't 100% sure what we should do. I patted Luke on the arm. "I guess we should try and figure out if this piece will fit into that thing in the storage locker." Lucas gripped octagon in his palm, squeezing tightly, as he stood up, getting ready to race out of the room. "Wait," I called, grabbing him by the wrist. "It's the middle of the afternoon. Even if you get past security unnoticed, something is going to happen when you do that, and people are going to be around. We're just asking for trouble."

"How long?" he asked, nervously. I ran a nervous hand over my head, taking a step towards the door. Lucas had the room cleaned up; putting everything back in its right place in an instant, and the two of us walked back to my room. The kid laid down on the, curling up in a ball, hands between his legs. He was practically shaking from a combination of fear, and nervousness. "When I was a baby and I got scared—I useda have these nightmares about falling out of an airplane or, it was…I fell out of the sky, but I never landed—Mom would take me back to my room, and hold me in her arms," he whispered, blushing slightly.

"She did the same thing for me too. Every time I was scared and when I got sick, which used to happen to me a lot." He lifted his head gently. "She'd sing too, remember?" The kid nodded. I lay down beside him, wrapped my arms around his slender, muscular frame, pressing my face against his neck, and started to sing one of Mom's favorite songs. I could feel his heart beating quickly, panicked, but soon he relaxed, the beats becoming slow and steady. He squirmed a bit; face buried in my shirt and started to sob uncontrollably.

"Lex, I just thought of something. I mean, I just thought of a question. Dad has that spaceship in a garage. He has to know what it is. He has to know that I'm not like you guys. But maybe he doesn't know about my—abilities. How much do you think he knows?"

"I don't think he knows very much," I explained. The kid gazed up at me all sad and confused. "If Lionel knew about all the things you're capable of. He would have—he'd be making you do stuff with it."

"Like what?" he asked, his eyes still wide with terror, mouth frowning deeply.

"I don't—he'd find a way to use them to his advantage. When I was seven, he realized that I can do really complicated math stuff in my head. He'd take me to work with him, have me go over budget reports that other people had turned in, have me crunch numbers. Dad said I was better than a calculator. I once figured out that this guy was using his corporate billing account to pay for personal stuff, a lot of it, and I didn't know what it was, but the stuff he claimed he was buying, didn't add up to the total at the bottom. I also saw that over a period of two years he was going to the same restaurant—it turned out to be a strip club—three times a week. Lionel patted me on the back and said, 'that's my smart boy.' It's the only time he ever complimented me in my whole life. Anyway, if father knew what you can do, he'd find a way to use those skills to...whatever. That's just how he is."

"How long do you think we're gonna be able to hide my powers from him?" he asked voice going up slightly, again. "He could be watching us right now, don't you think? And he might be keeping track of our movements?" I still had no idea, but didn't want to tell him this.

"I think he likes to keep us under his thumb. Besides that, and the—_other _stuff, he doesn't really give a shit about us—as long as we don't pull any stunts that gets us arrested, on the 10:00 news, or kicked out of school, as long as we don't cause any scandals…that's just our dad." Lucas nodded, touched his hand to my cheek softly, stroking it. I massaged his shoulders, arms, back, and neck, the same way Mom used to do for us when we were little kids and we got sick, or hurt, or messed up, or whatever. The kid smiled, weakly. "You're safe now, Lucas. It's cool. I won't let him—I won't let anybody hurt you, I promise."

"How much do you think Dad knows about me in general?" he asked, desperate to change the subject and avoid this conversation. "About where I came from, what I am, and about our investigation."

"I know I've been saying this a lot, and I know how much it sucks, but I have no idea. The one thing that man does honestly is lie. And hide things. He could know everything there is to know about you, whether you're an alien, or a meteor freak, or a genetically altered human that he experimented on, or any number of other things. That shi could be real or fake, and either way, e might or might not know. It is possible Lionel put the ship in some place you were bound to find it, just to torture you. Lucas, you were adopted. That tends to make kids wonder about their past. He might know about your abilities, he might not. It's possible—even probable—that our father underestimated our relationship. He probably assumed that I'd never take you seriously, never try to help you. He might be monitoring everything we do, but it's just as likely that he has no idea how close we are to figuring out the truth. Not that we actually know anything for sure. He could be so obsessed with manipulating us, molesting us, and playing mind games with us that our extra-curricular activities have gone unnoticed.

"Plus he's busy with work. You know how Lionel is with the company. Dad believes in money the way most people believe in god. His only semblance of a religion is that stupid fucking company. Sometimes I dream about growing up, building my own secret corporation, and taking—stealing—everything from him. Sorry, I went off on a bit of a tangent there." Lucas only shrugged and closed his eyes tiredly. "Let's get some sleep. We'll go back to the storage unit tonight." I closed my eyes, and curled up beside the kid. He yawned against my neck, soft, sweet-scented hair rubbing against my chin, and made soft little sounds, like a baby. I opened my eyes, watching him lovingly. _Love_, I thought, _what an odd idea_. I didn't love anybody, except my mother, and yet, I felt something in my heart for him, something good, something indescribable. I cared so deeply for him now, that I couldn't understand how we'd gotten to hate each other in the first place. I gently touched his hair, and kissed his forehead, smiling gently. That night I dreamt some terrifying, monster movie, nightmare in which Lionel was Dracula, and was trying to turn me into a little vampire so that I would be just like him. I woke up several hours later in a cold sweat, unsure as to how long I had had been sleeping. Lucas was sitting in a chair by the computer, holding a composition book on his lap, a pen moving across the pages ferociously. "What's that?"

"It's my journal," he explained. I couldn't help but crack a small smile, as I stood up, and made my way to his side. I tried to lean over his shoulder to read whatever he was writing, but he snapped the cover down.

"You keep a diary?" I taunted. Lucas rolled his eyes, but I couldn't help myself. "Obviously dear ol' dad doesn't know about _that_ or he'd—well I dunno what he'd do. And to think I always thought you were just like him."

"It's a journal. There's a difference. Lots of guys keep journals; most writers keep a journal, even the men," he explained, defensively. His tone made me think of when he was little and I used to try and convince him that he was actually my fifth brother. Mom and Dad kept adopting more kids, and giving them back when they got tired of the kid. "_No they didn't. You're lying. I'm special. Mommy says so._"

"Do you want to be a writer?" I asked, gently, while simultaneously trying to grab the notebook out of his hands. He shrugged. "There's something you wanted to tell me, or else you wouldn't have brought it up."

"I was just explaining it, is all. I mean, I—I don't know. I think I wanna be a reporter. Last year I worked for the school newspaper for eight months, before Lionel found out and made me quit. I won an award, and he got invited to the ceremony, that's when he got—mad. Lionel said…"

"'Journalists are the bane of the Luthor exists, and I'll be damned if any son of mine has anything to do with them.' I wasn't listening in on you, I wasn't even there. That's what he said to me when I was six and a nice man, who happened to be a reporter. The guy told me he worked for my daddy and needed to ask me some questions. I told they guy I didn't know anything, but it was a lie. Then, he…gave me a lollypop. Lionel found me, fifteen, twenty minutes later. I said, "he yells sometimes" and I'm not sure what else I would of said if he hadn't come by, but—He was so angry. He—he," I paused, all choked up, remembering how my father had grabbed me, and dragged me away, physically, yanking my arm with a sickening crack. "God damnit! I haven't cried since the funeral, and that was out of my control. I couldn't help it—sorry, again. I didn't mean to interrupt you."

"Well, maybe you could work with him at Luthorcorp. That way I can do whatever I want," he suggested. I said nothing. "You wanna to be the one who gets to something else, don't you?"

"I have this idea—well technically this girl I know came up with this idea for a comic book series. It's called Heroes and Villains. The, uh—most of the stories are independent, self contained. I we have this—we made a story, a pilot. It's about this guy who kills his brother but it's necessary. He found out that—the first brother is a superhero, Ultraman, and he figures out that his brother is his archenemies, the most evil villain whoever existed. He was going to…do something terrible. She drew all the pictures and came up with most of the stories lines but I thought. I came up with a couple of outlines and stories, and characters for other ones. I can't really draw, but I'm good at describing, and Rachel listens really well. She thinks we should do a few regular characters, a Warrior Angel type character but…anyway. Maybe I can work for Dad _and_ finance her comics. "

"Maybe neither one of us has to work for him," Lucas offered, innocently, sweetly, naively.

"How do you suppose we would work that one out?" I asked, mildly annoyed, but mostly intrigued. He smiled, a sad little boy smile. He shrugged again. "Just wishful thinking, huh?" Luke moved his head up and down slightly. Then, he handed over the notebook.

"You can read it if you wanna." I didn't really care either way. I'd only asked earlier, because I thought it would embarrass him. Now that he was sharing willfully it didn't seem all that exciting.

"I'll show you something of mine if you're okay with me looking through that, but you don't have to do this."

"It's mostly about my—the things I can do, other people I looked up on the Internet who are fast, or strong, and recently some of Chloe's articles." I reached under my bed and pulled out a small safe, turned the combination lock, and opened it, showing him the contents. There was a photo of my—our—mother holding me in her lap, both of us smiling, happy. My eyes are twinkling; a red curls dangling right above, and between my eyes.

"Mom always said this was her favorite picture of us. She said she'd never seen me so happy. I'm four here. A month later Lionel took me on a business trip wit him, and we shared a room for the first time. I uh…well, it's not important." Lucas made a face like he wanted to say something but didn't know how. "It's okay, I'm fine. Really." The box also had a couple action figures, Warrior Angel and Devilicus, what was left of my baby blanket, letters my mom wrote to me when I was away at camp one summer, a folder with all the copies of all the Heroes and Villains stuff, and a half-full bottle of prescription painkillers leftover from my broken collarbone, a few months earlier. Lucas dropped the journal in my lap, and I flipped through it. Most of the stuff was pretty angst ridden; _I don't understand what I'm going through; I'm not normal, there's something wrong with me,_ stuff that could have been written by anybody his age, except for the super powers. I looked at the most recent entry.

_Lex and I found the octagon thingy today. There's some kind of weird writing on it, but I don't know how to read it. Maybe I just wish I could get one single, solid answer, one thing I knew for sure about my past, my parents, my powers, Dad, Mom, anything!_ I nodded, sighing slightly. I knew exactly what he meant. "It's getting dark out. We should get ready to go," I said, putting the journal down.

"Wait," Lucas called out. "Maybe we should wait a few days, put some time between visits. We should probably do some more research too." I knew what he was doing. He was scared and believed that by giving himself time he could make the fear go away, and he would feel better. Only fear like that doesn't go anywhere. You can't hide from it, run away, cover it up, or pretend it doesn't exist. Fear, like pain, and many other emotions, only goes away when you face it. We had to put the key in the ship, see what would happen, and if we did it while Lionel was gone the chance of us getting caught, was much smaller. In a week, two weeks, a month, a year, that fear would only get worse and worse, making the two of us crazy.

"I know how you must be feeling, but this is important. We can't do this with Lionel around, snooping into our business, messing with us, being an over all jackass…" I sighed.

"No, Lex, that's just it! You don't know how I feel! You have no idea what I'm going through! You're the normal one!"

"What me, normal? The bald little boy who's daddy owns half the world? I'm a total freak, an outcast. Everybody hates me. You think I don't know what it's like to have weird crap happen to me?"

"But it's not the same. You're at least a normal—sort of—person. You know who your parents are, where they came from, where you came from," he snapped. At any other point in our lives, I would have smacked the kid for telling me that _I _didn't know how it felt to be different, but I guess the two of us had been through a lot lately. We'd bonded. And I decided to come up with another idea, let his comment slide for now.

"He's gonna be gone for a couple of days. We can head to the garage tomorrow," I suggested, and he gazed at me sweetly. It was almost like Lucas ways saying, _really_? I nodded.

"Thanks," he whispered, rubbing is thumb against Mom's face in the picture. "And I'm sorry about what I said," he added, almost an hour later. "I think you're right. It is scary, and I was being mean to you for no reason." I told the kid it was okay. _It's not your fault_, I said. Then, we went downstairs for dinner. Neither of us was hungry, but knew the kitchen staff was bound to report to Lionel if one of his boys missed a meal. They were supposed to be watching Lucas and me while he was gone. A good servant should be invisible, but I learned their schedules years ago, so I could run around, doing whatever I wanted, and not get caught. Between my awareness, and the kid's ability to see trough walls, they didn't see us tear the house apart, or go into Lionel's room.

When we got to the dining room, my little brother and I received a shock big enough to cause my heart to jump up into my throat. Luke probably responded similarly, but I couldn't feel it. There, sitting at the table—a glass of brandy in his right hand—was my father.

"Crap," I said. I hadn't meant to say it, but the just slipped out. He smiled. I hated that smile. It had too may painful memories attached to it. Plus it felt like my father was mocking me. My brother squeezed my hand.

"I'm starting to believe that perhaps my presence is less than welcome here. What's the matter, boys?" he asked, chuckling. Dad stood up, walked to where we were standing, and hugged each of us.

"We discussed this Lionel. I promised to be your little fuck-boy, and you promised to leave Lucas alone." He laughed again, kissing the top of my head, almost tenderly, as he embraced me again.

"Don't be crude, Lex," he ordered. I sighed, giving the man a dirty look. "And I'm not hurt hurting your brother. Since when is a hug from father to son inappropriate," he asked, baring his teeth. _It's not, unless you're the father. _The three of us were silent while the soup course was served, waiting for Maria to leave before continuing the conversation.

"What are you still doing here?" I voiced the question, but we were both thinking it. "I thought you were headed to Hong Kong for a couple of days." Lionel grinned some more, taking a small sip from his glass.

"I am, or at least I will be. My jet couldn't take off this morning. Something about storms over the Pacific Ocean. So, it looks like the three of us are going to have some more time together before I have to leave."

"How long have you been home?" I pushed. Maybe we had missed him and Dad knew all about our little treasure hunt. Maybe he didn't. Maybe the guy had decided to drag me or the kid with him on his trip. Maybe there was no trip. It was possible he knew we were up to something and pretended to be gone so we would do whatever we were going to do and catch us and…well that was about where my idea left off.

"I had meetings to attend all day long," he explained. I was going to make phone calls while in the air. So I did the same thing from Luthorcorp Plaza. Why? Where you doing something I wouldn't approve of?"

"No, well, yes, but you don't approve of anything I do, or have ever done. It's nothing. I invited that girl from Smallville over. She and Lucas went swimming, and riding and stuff. Lana, that's her name. I know how you feel about them ordinary, poor folk. We figured we should hide it until the kid figures out how serious things are with her." Lionel nodded almost as if to say, _attaboy_.

"Well at least one of my son's might one day produce an heir for me," he exclaimed, clapping Lucas on the back proudly. The kid jerked up in his seat so hard I half expected him to hit the ceiling. "Or not."

"Hey, Dad, can you tell me again how you found Lucas or how he…came to be a part of our family? After the meteor shower, dozens of kids were left homeless or orphaned, or lost, or hurt. Why did you pick this one, and don't tell me it was a matter of proximity. Obviously you thought there was something special about him. What was it?" My father laughed uproariously.

"I didn't find Lucas. He found us. He was leaning over you, just a sweet, beautiful little, boy. He grabbed onto me when I walked over. I picked him up, and looked his eyes, and I just knew he was a Luthor."

"So, what, you stole somebody's child because you wanted to fuck him? Because you thought you could make him into a heartless bastard like yourself? God that kid would have been better off being raised by wolves."

"Lex, that's enough. Go to your room. I'll be up to discuss your little outburst in a few minutes." I wanted to tell the kid I was sorry, and that I hadn't meant to leave him alone with the monster but didn't know how to say. Then, I stood up and started towards the stairs. Dad grabbed me by the arm, and twisted, roughly. Pain exploded in my wrist, but I didn't react. "And if you ever speak to me like that again, especially in front of _the help _you'll be spending the next few years at a military academy. At least you won't get teased as much up there," he taunted, using his free hand to rub and stroke my head.


End file.
